Ernest Hemingway said, All of American literature began with Huck Finn. And what hes talking about is someone with the couragethe moral, the artistic, the social courageto grasp this great underlying problem of American life: race.Ken Burns

Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan prepare for an interviewCourtesy Robert Sargent Fay

I think he would make an interesting film
even if he weren't one of our greatest writers.
He saw everything that the 19th century in
America had to offer. Riverboat pilot,
the hey day of riverboats, crossed the West
on a stagecoach, was there at the big booms
of the mining in Nevada.Dayton Duncan